


All the Queen's Men

by Nicholas de Pimpernelle (dePimpernelle)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1975, Assassination, Blackmail, Bribery, INDEFINITE HIATUS, Mention of Dragon Age, Not a Crossover, Ron dies off-screen, Some pretty amoral stuff happens is what I'm trying to say, Time Travel, marauder era, mention of past harry/ginny, unforgivables
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5616352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dePimpernelle/pseuds/Nicholas%20de%20Pimpernelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter, Director of MI7 and Officer of the Crown, in unhappy with his present. The present isn’t a nice place to be at all, with force registrations, terrible experiments, and the seizure of lands once held under ancient compact. He’d change things if he could, but war makes fools of us all, and everyone has someone to protect. No, the present isn’t pleasant at all, but when fate offers a chance to change things, he leads a group of the desperate and the resolute to the past to save the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The war changed a lot of things for a lot of people, as wars have a habit of doing. When they went into it they were schoolchildren, professors, Aurors, and fugitives, and when the dust settled none of them were the same. They thought they were fighting corruption, and ending the tyranny of a brutal dark lord. They thought they were making a better world. They told themselves all the usual lies and idealistic drivel that people in their position tell themselves. Harry Potter was stuck in a tent in the middle of nowhere, slowly starving, and those lies were one of the few things that sustained him. It was a brutal struggle, and when against all odds they won, that May day in Hogwarts’ grounds, they set about changing the world.

Or they tried to.

It turned out that Magical Britain’s latest civil war, set against the troubles of the late nineties, and had pushed the muggle government past the point of no return. Ancient treaties were revoked. The secret places that they had thought inviolate were breached, and the magical world as they knew it was destroyed, absorbed into a new, Modern Britain. What do you do when the world is crashing down around you? When old friends lie dead, and you are desperate to protect those close to you from the chaos and upheaval?

It turns out you take a government job.


	2. Mr. Smith

**London, August 2010**

Once the Ministry fell, struck down from within by witches and wizards loyal to Queen and Country, and the Statute of Secrecy was ripped to shreds and yet stronger than ever, it was all over for Magical Britain. The Ministry would have been the nucleus for any attempt to resist the forces of the Crown, but when it fell so swiftly all chance at resistance fell with it. Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, and Saint Mungo’s were secured swiftly soon after, and that cut the heart of Magical Britain. Wizarding society in Great Britain was a scattered patchwork, individual families scattered far and wide. There were only a few places that magical folk gathered in any number, and they all fell within hours. The writing upon the wall was plain for all to see, and Hogwarts surrendered without conflict soon after.

{AtQM} 

It took Harry Potter precious moments to realise that he had not woken up safe in his bed, at home. As was natural he began to reach for the side table that sat beside his bed, in his bedroom in the little cottage in Godric’s Hollow, only to find he could not move his arms. He strained in sudden panic, the muscles in his arms bulging from the effort, but there was no movement in his shackles. The last thing he remembered was being stood at bay before the door to the Minister’s Office in the Ministry of Magic, defending desperately against the forces determined to breach it. He was alone, long after those that stood with them had fallen, until something had struck him upon the head, and he had fallen into darkness. 

‘Be calm, Mr. Potter. You are _safe._ ’ 

It was a nondescript voice that spoke to him, one with a peculiar manner of speech. Harry had been restrained more than once in his life, and none of them had been situations that he would have called safe. There was a pause and a rustle of clothes, and then his glasses were placed delicately upon his face. The room shifted into focus and he knew in an instant where he was. Saint Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. It was a place he knew well. A turn of his head brought the owner of the voice into view. 

The man standing by the door was as nondescript as his voice, possessing the completely average features that screamed government employee, or spy, or both. Average was the word Harry would choose to describe him. He was of average height, had mousy brown hair kept neat, and brown eyes watching Harry from an utterly forgettable face. His suit looked moderately expensive, as did his shoes, watch, and the briefcase that sat neatly upon a nearby chair. He looked the part of the quintessential office working muggle, which was why he seemed so incongruous to Harry. They were within the only hospital in Magical Britain, so someone dressed like the stranger was a rare sight indeed. 

‘Who are you? And why am I restrained?’ Restrained as he was, the only movement in the room that Harry could see came from the nondescript stranger, and Harry found himself hyper aware of even the smallest of movements.

‘You may call me Mr. Smith, Mr. Potter, and I occupy a minor position in Her Majesty’s Government. As to why you are restrained,’ he said, pausing for effect, ‘all will soon become clear. I have some information, and an offer for you.’ 

Smith stepped over to his briefcase and removed a slim manila folder. He snapped the briefcase closed before placing in on the floor and taking the seat. ‘The Ministry of Magic has fallen. Forces loyal to the Crown and Her Majesty’s Government have taken your Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, Hogsmeade, Godric’s Hollow, Hogwarts, and this very hospital, all to very little loss of life. I tell you this not to shock you, nor break you, but so that you know that to resist further is pointless. Your society has gone too long mired in the past, thriving on discrimination and racism, and the deaths of innocent citizens of the United Kingdom. No more. As of now you are all Her Majesty’s subjects, subject to her laws. Her Majesty’s Government wishes for integration, Mr. Potter. It was the only way.’ 

‘My wife-’ the words slipped out before Harry could stop them. He had wanted to give nothing away, but if they had taken Godric’s Hollow… 

‘Mrs. Potter is _fine_ , Mr. Potter. She is _safe_ , just like you are. Worry not. Now, what I just told you was the information I mentioned, and here is the offer. Join us. Become an Officer of the Crown, the nondescript man said, sitting bolt upright in sudden agitation, become an Officer of the Crown, like I am, and help protect Her Majesty’s new subjects. 

‘Her Majesty’s Government wishes to create a new intelligence service, Mr. Potter, one devoted to protecting the innocent and upholding the rule of law, and we want you to help us. You are a symbol to the witches and wizards of Britain, not to mention your impressive record against the forces of disorder, and you will serve as an example of what we might all accomplish, if we simply work together.’ 

‘You want me to be your stooge, is that it?’ 

‘I meant nothing of the sort, of course not. You would, if you agree to our offer, be the Director of the new Magical Intelligence Service.’ Here Smith leaned forward, more conspiratorially, ‘I’ve been calling it MI7, informally. There will be benefits for you, of course. It will guarantee a measure of protection for you, Mrs. Potter, and her family. These are interesting times, Mr. Potter, and by joining us you can help see that they never become _dangerous_.’


	3. Machu Picchu Style

**London, May 2013**

Harry Potter made his way from the tube station to the unassuming building that housed the Magical Intelligence Service, known colloquially as MI7. It was one of those buildings that you find on high streets everywhere – unnecessarily large, built in the nineteenth century, with the ground floor divided into units for shops. The upper storeys had been converted into offices in the forties, since forgotten and left to fall into disuse, until they were bought by the Department and refurbished through a mix of methods both mundane and magical to become suitable. 

In the end Harry had taken the deal offered by the government; serve the Crown in return for the protection of his loved ones, and a chance to help shield those who could not protect themselves. It was not a decision he had taken lightly, and one that had weighed against his conscience ever since. It was not one he would have made as a teenager, but ten years later had seen him changed considerably. These days he had responsibilities, and had more to keep safe than just himself. He counted Ginny and the other Weasleys, Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin on that list, to name a few. He had had few options, that day long ago in St. Mungo’s, and the offered position had allowed him to extend that protection to some of the old crowd, building an organisation that was more capable and efficient than anything possible at the old Ministry of Magic. In his more laconic moments he liked to call it the New Firm. 

Things had started out well. Hogwarts was given a new lease of life as old disciplines were revitalised on the syllabus, and teaching and administrative standards were dragged towards modernity. Saint Mungo’s was moved to a new purpose-built building out past the M25, near Stevenage in Hertfordshire. Taxes were up across the board, as the magical world was forcibly introduced to the concept of income tax, but a muggleborn actually had a chance of earning a decent wage now. 

Then came the forced registration of every magical citizen, and a “magic-proof” tracking device implanted below the skin. Rumours spread of secret labs where even more secret “research” took place, which would have made Mengele blanch. Disappearances of “subversive elements” were widespread and commonplace. He strongly suspected that these rumours were true, but proof remained elusive, even to him. 

The New Firm itched to do something about it – after all, they counted amongst their number former many members of Dumbledore’s Army or the Order of the Phoenix, and had fought at the Battle of Hogwarts. The problem was that it was too late. Magical society as they knew it had fallen long ago, and that there was no going back to how things had been. They had all of them accepted that there was not much more to do now than to keep your head down, and try to keep your friends and family safe by toeing the line. 

It was fifteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts, to the day, that Hermione Granger came to Harry Potter with a mad plan to save all that was lost. 

{AtQM} 

It was a normal May morning in London, which meant the weather was grey and overcast, the wet drizzle of rain staining the concrete as grey as the sky above it. He found the soft patter against the awning of his rosewood-handled umbrella soothing. He made it up to the upper floor of the office with little fuss, wound his way through the magically expanded open plan area and into his small corner office. There was a note on his desk, written in Hermione’s neat handwriting. _Patronus me when you get in, it’s Important_ , it read. 

A flick of his wand and a whisper saw Prongs flash into existence. Despite his best efforts Harry was still unable to perform the charm silently. ‘Tell Hermione I’m in the office.’ He didn’t look up to see Prongs bound away, disappearing through one of the walls, as he busied himself with paperwork. Paperwork was the necessary evil of government work, and as Director Harry saw far more of it than he wanted to. Files in manila folders were piled on his desk, and he worked through them methodically as he waited. Terry’s expenditures for his informant network in Brighton & Hove; Susan’s reports on unrest in the North Yorkshire Relocation Projects; and Dean’s report on what he insisted on calling blackboard projects, which were really covert assassinations. “I rub them out, get it?” he would always say, then laugh that soft laugh of his. Harry signed what needed signing, followed up by sending by paper-aeroplane memo on what required it, and had managed to clear his desk by the time Hermione arrived. 

Her soft knock against his office door preceded her entrance. Hermione’s mood could be gauged through her knock. Stress turned what was usually a single soft knock into a sharp, staccato, _rat-a-tat-tat_. Trepidation turned it into a knock that seemed to go on forever. It was noteworthy as most of the New Firm, more used to the stresses of fieldwork, kept themselves more tightly controlled. They had one knock, and they stuck to it, no matter their mood. Today it was the soft _tap-tap_ that promised strange ideas and hare-brained schemes. Of all Hermione’s knocks, this was his favourite. 

Harry shuffled the paperwork off to one side of his desk. ‘Morning, Hermione.’ 

‘Morning, Harry,’ she said. There was a strange note in her voice, part regretful, part nostalgic. ‘Do you think we made the right choice? Joining the government, even after-' 

They were still for a breath, neither Harry nor Hermione looking at each other as they shared a painful memory. 

‘I still don’t know. Maybe. It’s the choice we made, though, and there isn’t any going back.’ 

‘Don’t you think about what Dumbledore might have said, though? We had a choice, between doing what was right and what was easy. Did we take the easy way out?’ 

‘Things weren’t like they were with Voldemort, Hermione. The world was a very different place. We had families to protect, people counting on us. I think not forgetting our responsibility was the right thing to do. It wasn’t easy at all, and Dumbledore would have understood that. What brought this on?’ 

‘I was thinking about the past.’ She sat down in the chair before his desk, propping her elbow on the edge of the desk and resting her chin upon her hand. ‘Old regrets, you know? Sometimes it’s hard to look at the things we’ve done and think it was worth it. Anyway,’ Hermione said, giving gave a gusty sigh, ‘I – we – in my department, that is, think we’ve come across something important.’ She took a deep breath, and with that breath her entire demeanour changed. The melancholy look fled her eyes, and she vibrated slightly from excitement, and tension, and something else that he couldn’t name. Her hair was bushier too, in this state, wild and bushy, and Harry hadn’t seen her this animated since Ron died. 

‘You remember we, um, liberated the library from the Department of Mysteries when the Ministry fell?’ 

He nodded. It hadn’t been him that had saved what could be saved, when the Ministry fell, or even Hermione. Hermione had been trapped in her department by Crown forces, and Harry had been knocked unconscious defending the Minister’s offices with the some of the Aurors. It had been Padma, an Unspeakable herself, who had recognised how doomed the situation was and led some of her fellows in removing the books and paperwork in the Department of Mysteries Archives. Not that his superiors in Whitehall knew what MI7 was sitting on, of course. It had been filed creatively as “Reclaimed Ministry Paperwork”, specifically of minutes of meetings from 1800 to 1825. There was a lot he kept secret from his superiors. Secrets were their stock-in-trade. 

‘We’ve had some of our Archive Assistants going through the old paperwork from the different sections, and we think we found something big from the Time section.’ 

‘How big are we talking?’ 

‘Huge, Harry. To start with, some of the paperwork speaks of a reserve “well” of the “sands of time”, and that they had completed testing on the “temporal rituals”, including one that can move a group of people anywhere in the past, and protect them from the effects of paradoxes.’ 

Harry sat up bolt upright in his chair, staring at Hermione with wide eyes. ‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’ 

‘Let me get there,’ she said, flashing him a brief smile. ‘Don’t interrupt. Once that came to light I had all hands on deck to sort through the rest of the files. What we found… well, I’ve read it all and I’m not sure I believe it. Further reports, and minutes of meetings, show that the Unspeakables felt that if it became known what temporal magics were capable of, it would become open to abuse on a disastrous scale. That was the motive behind the development of the time turner you know – bind temporal magic within strict rules, of limited utility, and heavily restrict their use.’ 

That was typical of the Department of Mysteries, as it was before the Fall. Your average Unspeakable delved into the darkest depths of what was possible with magic, uncovering and developing Arts that would steal your breath and leave you reeling – except the Department kept all of it secret. Powerful spells and incantations that could warp the very fabric of reality were distilled into something tame and palatable enough for the average witch or wizard to use, then released to the rest of the Ministry where they could be wrapped up within enough yards of red tape that they were hardly ever used. As much as the Unspeakables might have wanted to bury the whole thing, their oaths prohibited it, so what was dangerous was turned into something relatively harmless. Time turners were a perfect example. 

‘To understand the ritual they developed, you have to understand the background, which involves looking at how the Inca viewed time. Don’t look at me like that,’ she said, correctly interpreting the look on Harry’s face as worry about a lengthy lecture, ‘I’ll keep it short and to the point.’ Hermione conjured a piece of paper, and borrowed his pen. She drew a long straight line. ‘The Inca thought differently than we do about time. For us we have life; we are born, and then we die. 

‘This is essentially a linear path, Everything that happens before our lives is History, and happens behind us, and everything that happens after we die is the Future, and happens before us. Everything we understand about our ancestors affects our present, and everything we do in our lives affects our descendants. This is our western concept of time. 

‘The Inca,’ she said, drawing two more lines on the paper, one above and one below the original, running parallel,’ saw things differently. We start with a line called Kay Pacha,’ here she pointed at the original line, ‘which is the present, or the world as we know it. But running parallel to this are two more, above and below. Above the Kay Pacha line is Hanan Pacha, the future, or the world above; and below is Ukhu Pacha, the past, or the world below. What is crucial to understand is that all three lines can be happening at once. At any particular moment on in the present, they can transect between all three lines – the point where the line transects the Kay Pacha line is a particular moment in time, and is affected directly by either the past or the future. 

‘The Unspeakables working in the Time Section,’ Hermione lectured, ‘this was oh, seventy years ago, managed to create a ritual based off of this theory that meant they could travel back to any point in time – even outside the lifespan of the subject, which had been thought impossible – because the spell protected the subject from the usual temporal effects. I’ll spare you the technical details. Can you imagine how this might have been abused? This has got to be the first time I’m thankful for the oaths of an Unspeakable.’ 

Harry was silent for a long moment, lost in thought. If all this was true, and the implications were correct, then they had an opportunity here to put right all that had gone wrong in the last fifty years. See to it that Voldemort never rose to power in the first place. Use the recent advances from Padma’s section to secure Magical Britain from a repeat of the Fall by hiding the important sites behind new ward schema that would defy any attempts by the muggle government to find them. They could use their knowledge of Death Eater personnel, as well as their safe houses, stockpiles, and their targets to stop the nascent terrorist movement cold. Use their advances in field craft to see they couldn’t mount a resurgence, and eventually eliminate Voldemort. If they could manage it, it would be the answer to a truly desperate future. 

‘You asked earlier what Dumbledore would have said about all this,’ he said slowly. ‘You know, when they approached me after the Fall, I was optimistic. This was our chance to build a better society, quicker by magnitudes than what we’d have managed working from within the Ministry and Wizengamot. But what we got isn’t what I’d hoped for, not by a long shot. If we can change things so that the Fall never happens, but don’t, I do know what Dumbledore would say if we didn’t try. It would definitely be a case of doing what was easy, instead of what was right. 

‘What do we need to do?’


	4. We Lucky Few

**London, May 2013**

Once the sun had set, and they had the advantage of the cover of darkness, Harry Potter and a group of his closest colleagues gathered not far from the old Ministry of Magic building. Hermione and Padma had joined him from the office, and he had pulled Dean and Daphne in from their current assignment in Birmingham. They were in a deserted side street close to where the visitor entrance had stood, the five of them lurking in heavy shadow. Had Susan, Lavender, and Terry been present he would have been standing with all the people in the world that he could truly trust. 

‘You’re sure you can get us in?’ Harry asked Padma. 

They were each in the standard issue field kit for an MI7, with a simple hood and Department of Mystery-standard obfuscation charm to hide their identities. Body armour of Ukrainian Ironbelly leather, sewn together with Acromantula silk. A weapon strapped to each wrist and ankle, and a muggle pistol as a backup. 

‘I did raise the wards, Harry,’ Padma replied. He couldn’t see her face, but from the set of her shoulders she looked determined, and her voice was steady. ‘I raised them, so I can bring them down. For a short time.’ 

He nodded, trusting her judgement. Padma had joined the Department of Mysteries straight after finishing her N.E.W.T.s, joining the section that researched ward schemes and other protective magic. It had been her that had raised the Department of Mystery’s Doomsday Wards, and led her section out of the Ministry through a then-unknown back door. Later most of them had joined the R&D section of MI7. If Padma said she could do it then he believed her. 

Harry led the small group out of their shadowed side street, wands out and layered in modified notice-me-not and disillusionment charms, designed to shield them from the eyes of the various CCTV cameras that littered London in a patchwork, let alone those to be found watching along their route. A short walk saw them arrive at where the visitor’s entrance for the Ministry used to be. The decrepit looking old-fashioned telephone box was gone, and in its place was the large hole Crown forces had used to breach the Ministry. It was typical of the new regime that they hadn’t bothered to even seal the hole in the ground, preferring instead to put up a suite of obscuring wards to keep attention away. He suspected that by now it was infested with a host of magical creatures, and at least partly flooded. Not to mention the very real risk of encountering looters. 

‘Keep your eyes open, people. There could be anything down there.’ 

The hole was large enough that, after a quick arresto momentum, they could drop down into the darkness as a group, which was an infinitely better choice for insertion than the single file method they would have been forced to use had the visitors entrance remained intact. The tunnel down was unremarkable, in that it looked exactly like what you would expect a tunnel to look like. It was the small patch of light, growing larger as they floated leisurely closer that held Harry’s attention. 

The large space they entered looked nothing like it had the first time he had seen it, all those years ago. The peacock-blue ceiling was cracked and broken, the inlaid golden symbols ceased in their movements. The dark wood panelling that had lined the walls was almost completely gone, leaving the stonework exposed, and where it was still in place it was blackened by spellfire. The remains of the Memorial Fountain, which had replaced the Magic is Might monument, and the Fountain of Magical Brethren before that, loomed in the centre of the cavernous space, broken and incomplete. In the distance lay the remains of the golden gates, hanging shattered from their hinges, beyond that was their destination, the lifts. 

Harry and his companions made their way slowly and cautiously through the large space towards their destination, each of them on the lookout for any danger. The bodies that had littered the space were gone, though as they moved cautiously forwards they passed the spot Harry knew Ron had fallen. He risked a quick look at Hermione and, seeing her pale face and drawn features, reached out to give her shoulder a quick squeeze. 

It was a moment of inattention that almost cost them dearly, as a cloud of doxies boiled from a crack in the floor in front of him, having been obscured from view by piles fallen of masonry. He turned back just as they were truly airborne, and only had time to snap off the first spell that came to mind – a ribbon cutter. It left his wand silently, a bright grey ribbon of light that leapt towards the cloud of doxies. Wherever it touched it cut cleanly with a hiss, but the spell did nothing to stop the momentum of its target. Harry was hit in the face with a bit of sticky carapace, and the others didn’t do much better. 

‘A ribbon cutter, Potter? Really?’ asked Daphne, amusement clear in her voice. ‘It’s a spell for cutting grass!’ 

‘Shut up, Green _grass_ ,’ he muttered, a little embarrassed. It was alright for her, she was standing directly behind him so had had cover from the rain of doxy bits. A different spell might have been more effective and not covered them in the offal of a magical creature, but a quick glance at Hermione showed she was enjoying his discomfort as she cleaned the mess off of him and the others, so his mistake had one good result, at least. ‘Let’s move on, yeah?’ 

They made it through the Atrium without further incident, past the ruined golden gates towards the jagged pits where the magical lifts used to stand. Once the Crown forces had secured the Atrium itself they had detonated a series of bombs in the lift-shafts, to isolate each floor of the Ministry from the others so they could clear them piecemeal. It had been a blitzkrieg of startling effectiveness – Harry had been in a meeting up on the first floor with most of the other Department Heads, so once resistance had been crushed in the Atrium they had been powerless to mount a proper defence. In the end, surrender had been their only option. 

Like before, after a quick arresto momentum they dropped into the hole as a group. It was a straight trip one floor down to the bottom of the shaft. As they emerged he saw the familiar sight of the barren corridor that lead to the Department of Mysteries that he knew so well, both from his fifth year and after Hogwarts. There, at the end of the corridor, past the stairs that led down to the courtrooms, was the lonely door that served as the entrance. Or it would be, if they could see through the wards. 

Long ago – not even Hermione was sure when – when the Ministry of the day had seen the need for a Department of Mysteries, a great set of wards had been laid down, powerful enough to rival Hogwarts or Gringotts in their heyday. The Unspeakables had known that much of the knowledge held, and in some cases imprisoned, in the bowels of the Ministry building was so dangerous that the wards had been designed to encase the department in a gargantuan bubble, sealing the whole area off from the outside world. It was opalescent; a shifting, boiling riot of colours that hurt both the eyes and the mind, and he could feel its power as a vibration in his bones. Not with a thousand wands and a hundred years could Harry breach these wards, and it would be madness to try. That is unless you had the key, but in Padma they had a way to bypass the lock. 

The group made their way to the very edge of the wards, as uncomfortable as it made them feel, and formed a tight perimeter around Padma, who knelt and began painting a runic circle upon the flagstones. As the runes were painted with careful precision, and she began a chant in a language he didn’t understand, Harry could feel a sense of anticipation gather in the air that caused the hair all over his body to stand on end, and a pressure against his ears. It came to a peak when she drew her combat knife and slashed brutally at her forearm. He could see her catch the crimson in her palm as it flowed, before flicking it at each painted rune in turn. 

The pressure grew in intensity as the chant grew in volume, until both were a living presence in his mind, visceral and terribly immediate. It grew and grew, until he thought he might scream or fall to the floor from the terrible strength of it, until there was an audible _pop_ , and where the raging kaleidoscope of colour had been there was now a gap in the wards, large enough to pass through single file. 

He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding in relief. An important obstacle had been bypassed. ‘From this day to the ending of the world,’ he murmured to himself as he stepped through the gap in the wards, ‘but we in it shall be remembered – we few, we happy few, we band of brothers-’ 

‘What?’ whispered Daphne. 

‘He’s quoting Shakespeare,’ Hermione whispered back. ‘It’s supposed to buck us up, I think.’ 

‘Drama queen.’ 

Harry shot them an annoyed glance. The others never had appreciated his attempts to add gravity to a situation. 

Where the Ministry above was battle-scarred and ruined, decayed even after a few short years, the Department of Mysteries looked pristine. If you looked closely you could see the signs of a hasty departure; the odd piece of parchment left behind in the exodus, and drawers hanging open. Crown forces hadn’t reached here, warning of the attack having reached the department in time for Padma to raise the wards. 

Harry hadn’t entered the Department of Mysteries since that night in his fifth year at Hogwarts. He wasn’t an Unspeakable, so had no reason to be down here, and it was restricted regardless. It looked very different to how it had when he had entered illicitly the last time, but the creeping sense that they were intruding where they were not meant to be was the same. With Padma leading the way they would reach their destination much quicker, too.

‘It isn’t far to the Time room. Come on,’ urged Padma. 

The less time spent amongst this graveyard of their past, the better. 

{AtQM} 

There was only one light on in the building that housed the Magical Intelligence Service so late, and it was only because of the gathering in the staff room. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Padma Patil, Dean Thomas, and Daphne Greengrass had returned from their foray into the site of the old Ministry of Magic. They joined at the table in the staff room by Terry Boot, Susan Bones, and Lavender Brown. This was the nucleus of MI7, all the people in the world that he knew professionally that he trusted the most. Some of them were sweaty and tired, but all of them were quietly triumphant as they sat in silence, passing around a bottle of firewhiskey. Yet the frightful reality of just what they wanted to accomplish loomed over all of them like a threatening storm cloud. Each step of the task ahead of them, taken individually wasn’t too daunting. All they had to do was actually complete the ritual successfully, establish a method of tracking the Death Eaters – either through their existing knowledge, the establishment of an information network, or Lavender’s excellent scrying skills – eliminate the high-ranking Death Eaters, dismantle the Dark Lord’s terrorist organisation, and ultimately destroy Voldemort. It seemed simple when listed so, but they all knew the likely difficulty of what they wanted to accomplish. 

What they had also been ignoring up until now was that they would be leaving everyone they knew behind them. Their families, their friends, even acquaintances. Even if the ritual worked properly and they arrived where they meant to – and more importantly when they meant to – there was no guarantee that they would be able to return, and if was indeed a possibility, it would mean returning to a world alien to what they knew, peopled with a thousand faces that were familiar but worn by strangers. Maybe it would be better for them not to return, instead work to build new lives in the past. 

‘Right,’ said Harry, breaking the heavy silence. ‘Are we really doing it? I won’t – can’t – order you to do this. Volunteers only.’ He grabbed the bottle as it passed and refilled this glass. A sip later and he felt the welcoming burn of Ogden’s Finest pool on his tongue. ‘This could be the definition of a one way trip.’ 

‘You really think we can pull this off?’ asked Dean. 

‘Dumbledore always said a wizard can accomplish anything when he realises he’s part of something bigger. A team of people who share that conviction can change the world. It would mean leaving behind everything we’ve built by living our lives. You’d be leaving behind everyone you know. Everyone. But in return we just might have a chance to build the world we wanted to, all those years ago. I can’t weigh my happiness against that – and lets face it, recently things ain’t been that happy. 

‘So what do you say?’ he said, slamming his cup onto the tablet top. ‘You ready to change the world?’


	5. Touchdown, 1975

**Brunton Airfield near Alnwick, Northumberland, 1975**

The ritual itself had been several things all at once; simple to set up, too complicated for Harry to understand, and utterly terrifying. They had made it, all eight of them, a little roughed up from the passage but whole, and their equipment. A resounding success, then, even if Harry knew he would never understand it. His talents lay more in the direction of making things explode than complicated magical theory. 

What really mattered was that they were here now, even if there was no word on whether they would be able to return. The lack of a definitive answer didn’t bother Harry, not really. He had been willing to sacrifice his present to come back to the past, leaving behind a failed marriage and his godson. Hopefully they could see to it that this was a world where Teddy Lupin grew up with both his parents, and Andromeda Tonks didn’t lose her husband. His parents and Sirius, were all alive right now, somewhere out in the world. The events that surrounded the years around his birth hadn’t happened yet, and hopefully would never happen. It was a comforting thought that he clung to. He pushed thoughts of lost loved ones away. It did not do dwell on thoughts of the past, Dumbledore had said long ago, so that’s what Harry would do. He wouldn’t forget to live. 

If you wanted a place that was more or less completely deserted, you couldn’t find somewhere better than Brunton Airfield. He stood at the top of the stairs leading down to their new headquarters, surveying the flat ground of the airfield around him like some general of old. It wasn’t so bad, as places in the middle of nowhere went, and the isolation meant they could hide their presence here much more effectively. 

They had faced a lot of decisions, when the New Firm had begun the tedious legwork of all the paperwork necessary before making the big jump to the past. First up had been the choice of where to place their headquarters, and branching inevitable from there the questions on what gear and supplies they would need, let alone acquiring and stockpiling them in out of the way caches. There had been some suggestion of using a muggle area as a base, either an abandoned house in one of the mining towns in the north of England, or taking over a disused warehouse on an industrial estate fallen upon hard times. Somewhere that the Death Eaters wouldn’t know about, and somewhere they were even less likely to be able to find. They needed somewhere easily overlooked by even a less than casual observer and somewhere easy to secure. 

It had been Terry’s fascination with Second World War history that had presented them with the solution. One of the old airfields built during the Second World War would be perfect for their use, since not many people used them, and they wouldn’t be accessing their headquarters by muggle means anyway. Muggle traffic could be warded against, and it wasn’t place the average witch or wizard would be aware of. The ravenclaw had even known of one, not from where his family had lived for a time, just north of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. This part of Northumberland was pretty flat, being located on the low plain to the west of the North Sea coast, which was all to the good, since it allowed them a good amount of visibility. Standing at the top of the steps that lead down to one of the bomb shelters still left at the airfield, Harry could see in the distance the range of hills and moorlands that made up the Northumberland National Park. 

Brunton Airfield was opened in 1942, intended for the use of training single-seat fighter pilots, and consisted of three tarmac runways laid out in an ‘A’ shape. Even better, some of the original buildings were still standing, even though the airfield was closed after the war. It saw some commercial use as a parachute centre from the old hangars but the bomb shelters were fenced off and abandoned. It was just what they needed. It would take short work on their part to slap Padma’s modified fidelius on one of the shelters, expand the interior and erect a trio of wizarding tents, and they would have their headquarters. The best part was that they could apparate from the bottom of the steps, out of sight to the casual observer. 

Harry was interrupted from his thoughts by the sound of a boot against the concrete steps, and turning, saw Susan step up next to him. Susan Bones was around 5’5”, and had a smiling, open face and sunny disposition to go with her ginger hair. Empathetic and caring, she was the kind of person that you couldn’t help opening up to, something she used to great effect as part of Terry’s information gathering network. She was very, very good at winkling out the little bits of information from many sources that could be pieced together to build up the big picture, not through coercion or bribery, but through charisma and conversation. 

‘Alright, Harry?’ she said in greeting. ‘We’re almost finished setting up in there, if you want to come take a look.’ 

‘Yeah,’ he replied absently, but didn’t move. He had helped as much as possible, cleaning out the interior of the bomb shelter and laying the preparatory spell work. The expansion enchantments they intended to lay on the interior, however, that meant folding space so that there would be enough space of the wizarding tents, let alone the work of laying the more rigorous wards, was incredibly delicate wandwork. He was smart enough to know when he was getting in the way. 

‘Are we doing the right thing here, Susan? Meddling in time? I realise that it’s a bit too late for second thoughts but I can’t help but think, or miss –’ 

‘I won’t pretend I can be completely objective here, Harry,’ Susan interrupted. Her usual smile, the mask she kept up around others was gone for a time, leaving an expression far more serious than any he had seen outside of battle on her face. I mean, I have a personal stake in this – Riddle saw my entire family killed. And what came after, that wasn’t a world any of us wanted to keep living in. We all joined the department because we had someone we wanted to protect. You, had the Weasleys; me, Neville and Hannah; Hermione, her parents, and so on for the rest of us. But I wouldn’t say any of us were content with where things were heading – I mean, how much were you hiding from your masters in Whitehall, by the end?’ 

She laid a comforting hand on his elbow. ‘But yes, I think we’re doing the right thing. We can gut those racist bastards before they get their feet under them, and handle whatever comes next. We all gave up something when we took your invitation, but we all joined MI7 with the understanding that we were serving something greater than ourselves. Whether it was the desire to serve, or protect the innocent, we all knew we would be giving up things when we joined; a family of our own, or friends we could talk to truthfully about our days work. You made it clear at the beginning what the duty we were taking on really meant, and what the sacrifices were that we would be expected to make. I think by now we’re familiar enough with what duty and sacrifice mean to keep going. 

‘I’ll miss Hannah and Neville, definitely, but I’m reassured that if we do this properly a lot of the bad things from our pasts won’t happen. There won’t be a little Susan Bones growing up with just her aunt and Hannah Abbott for company, or a Neville Longbottom confronted by parents who don’t recognise him. Or even a little Harry Potter growing up without his parents, left ignorant of his heritage in the muggle world. That’s the thought that comforts me. Now,’ she said, getting a firmer grip on his elbow, ‘the sooner you get inside and look everything over, the sooner we can get started on that.’ 

They turned together, swapping hands on elbows, and made their way down the short concrete staircase. As they stepped into the dimly lit interior of the bomb-shelter-cum-headquarters Harry felt the power of the wards wash over him, noting the seemingly extra long step it took to step into the magically expanded space. It always felt like, to him, that for one moment that simultaneously stretched on forever yet didn’t, that each leg was separated by infinity until you put your foot down and everything snapped back into place. The interior of their new headquarters looked exactly like you would expect the inside of a bomb shelter abandoned to the elements for decades would look like, except bigger than it had any right to be. The walls and floor still showed the discoloration of the years, despite their best cleaning charms. It seemed that magic could really do only so much. Arrayed at the back of the space, arranged in a row, three tents had been erected. They were each a wizarding tent, of course, which was why the expansion charm had been such delicate work, since they couldn’t interfere with the charms placed upon the tents themselves. 

‘The left tent,’ said Susan, ‘holds the armoury of our muggle weapons, and the main supply cache. The centre tent holds the workroom, potions lab, and training room. The last is the dormitory tent. Daphne scored us the deluxe model, so we have a room each, as well as a kitchen, dining room, and living room.’ 

Harry nodded firmly, a satisfied smile upon his face. ‘Not bad for government work right, Sue?’ he asked, nudging Susan towards the rightmost tent. ‘Let’s get down to business.’


	6. Goodbye Augustus

**Diagon Alley, London, 1975**

Dean Thomas knew that the very first thing you had to get right when planning an assassination was preparation. Get that right, and everything else would fall into place easily enough. Take today’s little blackboard mission as an example: he knew where the target would be, the rough time he would be there, had a good spot to fire from picked out, and all the equipment he’d need to do the deed. The reconnaissance work had all been done remotely, courtesy of Lavender’s talent with the field of Divination, which had the added benefit that he didn’t have to spend time skulking around Knockturn Alley, where someone might remember his face and mention that to the Death Eaters if they started asking pointed questions. 

The second thing you needed to get right was insertion, and that was all the work of Dean himself. The ability to go where he needed to, when he needed to, without drawing attention to himself was the product of a youth growing up in East London, where it was sometimes best to be invisible. Inserting yourself without being noticed, with wizards, meant avoiding magic entirely. Casting a disillusionment charm or glamour, wearing an invisibility cloak, or even swallowing a dose of polyjuice potion were nothing against what you could accomplish with a well constructed gait, or determined stride. He found it ridiculous that most wizards couldn’t approach a problem without resorting to magic, but it was a weakness he was more than willing to exploit. 

The third part you had to get right was using the right equipment. The New Firm, unlike the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that it had more or less replaced, had benefitted hugely from such a close working relationship with Her Majesty’s Government. The mysterious Smith had, so the rumour went, promised Harry the latest and best in whatever equipment he needed to run MI7, and it resulted in a field kit that left Dean looking more like a Special Forces unit than what the magical world thought a soldier looked like. They wore body armour, made from the hide of Ukranian Ironbelly leather, sewn with Acromantula silk and enchanted for comfort, temperature control, flexibility and protection. A wand on one wrist, silver knife on the other, and a more common steel knife on the ankle, a First World War pistol as a backup meant they were heavily armed, by magical standards. 

A Webley IV was their ace in the hole for when the midden hit the windmill, so to speak, because it was thanks to a Muggle Studies course at Hogwarts that most wizards thought a gun couldn’t be smaller than a smoothbore musket, nor fire more rapidly. They were wholly unprepared for what a .455 calibre bullet did to a protego, especially at close range. For distance assassinations, which were one of the many and varied services that he provided to the New Firm, Dean himself favoured a Lee-Enfield scoped rifle. It was dependable, completely mechanical, and even with the shorter range than a more modern sniper rifle he still struck outside of the comfortable range of the average wizard. Besides, with an undetectable expansion charm is was incredibly easy to transport. 

Dean had appeared in a little alley off of Charing Cross Road, preferring to walk through Diagon Alley as just another shopper, meandering between the shop fronts and stalls before veering off into Knockturn Alley. It was the work of moments for Dean to climb nimbly up onto the roof of Borgin and Burke’s. 

He knelt on the slate of the roof, and retrieved the hard case containing his Lee-Enfield Mk III from the undetectable expansion charmed pouch that held all of his equipment, not just his rifle. In addition to the Lee-Enfield was a small supply of potions, rations, ammunition and an emergency portkey. He wasn’t wearing the full field kit today, the need to stay incognito forcing him to abandon the shielded helmet and combat visor, leaving him with the Ukranian Ironbelly armour, boots, and utility belt, all shrouded by a heavy dark robe, which he shrugged off before setting to assemble his rifle and tripod with quick, deft movements. Lavender’s scrying had put his target in the lower part of Knockturn in about five minutes, which gave him ample time to set up. 

The subject of whom on their long list of Death Eaters would hold the honour of being first to be eliminated had been hotly debated, some of their number suggesting one of the Death Eaters who posed more of a danger in a fight, like Dolohov, but eventually Augustus Rookwood’s name had floated to the top. It was an interesting choice, since he wasn’t the most magically powerful member of Riddle’s inner circle, nor had he sunk the deepest into the Dark Arts. No, Augustus Rookwood had been selected first because he was the very definition of a Spider. 

Through old family friends, house- or year-mates from his Hogwarts days, colleagues in the Ministry of Magic, or even from members of his social circle, Augustus Rookwood had established an information web of unparalleled breadth and complexity. But above all this, and what made him so dangerous to the New Firm, was that he was also an Unspeakable of the Department of Mysteries. It was this, more than his position as Riddle’s spymaster that meant he had to die, and soon, because if the Department of Mysteries was aware of temporal travellers and Rookwood learnt of it all could be lost. He had to be eliminated immediately, cutting off Riddle’s access to the Department of Mysteries, and that was why Dean Thomas was in Knockturn Alley, skulking atop Borgin and Burke’s. 

Dean readied his rifle with steady hands, resting it comfortable against the low tripod. He lay down, pulling the big heavy cloak over himself and hunched over the stock of the rifle, settling in to wait. In addition to being an excellent disguise in a place like Knockturn Alley, the dark cloak would serve to hide him from casual sight by changing his silhouette, since he couldn’t rely on a charm or jinx to hide his position. Most witches and wizards of a suspicious bent had an eyepiece or monocle enchanted to show active magic as bright colours, and Augustus Rookwood had good reason to be suspicious. If he wanted to stay hidden from his target long enough to strike he would have to do things the muggle way. Against the dark clouds of the overcast sky he was just an irregular shape against the backdrop of the roof, only the tip of the muzzle of his rifle visible outside of the shadow of the cloak. 

A quick look at his watch showed three minutes to go from Lavender’s estimate, a number he was more than willing to bank on. It was scary just how accurate Lavender could be. The wait gave him more than enough time to ponder things. For Dean it had been an easy choice to travel to the past. He didn’t have any family left, after the war, and the only friends he had were those who had travelled with him to 1975. The closest friend he had left was Daphne, since the partnered together most often, and she had been left as damaged by the war as he had been. 

Dean was aware that he was a much-changed man, wrought by the war into someone very different than what he might have been. The war had, after all, changed all of them. The innocent Dean Thomas who had gone through Hogwarts was mostly gone, worn away by that terrible year of 1998. The Muggleborn Registration Commission at the Ministry, which had seen muggleborns like him rounded up to be sent, either to Azkaban if rebellious or out into the muggle world with their wands snapped and magic bound if they were lucky, had been the catalyst for what he had become. By day he was in hiding, helping Lee Jordan and others run their underground radio station. By night, when the pressure to do _something_ , to strike back became too much, he hunted Death Eaters, and the Snatchers that did their bidding. 

In his pre-Hogwarts days, as a child in East London, he had come across a curious little concrete building, hidden behind a wild tangle of brambles, in a steep depression at the back of the local allotments. It must have been built during one of the World Wars, as some kind of supply dump or cache, with some mishap of paperwork leaving it lost and forgotten. There had been warning signs on the outside, similar to those on the little electrical substations found in residential areas all over the country. Little Dean Thomas hadn’t known just how dangerous those places could be, or had been too curious to heed the signs. Inside he had found stacks of metal cases, row upon row, and inside all manner of personal weaponry. At the time it had been a curiosity, quickly forgotten as he was swept up in the excitement of learning magic and leaving home for Scotland, until the rage and righteous anger at all the injustice in the magical world had swelled up inside him and shattered the constraints accepted by those in a reasonable society, granting him a startling sense of clarity – and purpose. 

These people were hurting his friends and allies, and threatened everyone just like him, and to Dean’s new sense of clarity there was no other recourse but to remove as many of them from this world as he could. 

He took the bus back to his old neighbourhood, knowing that travelling as a muggle was the only sure way to avoid the attention of the Snatchers, and went back to that little concrete bunker in East London. He took something from each of those metal crates that he remembered from so long ago, and then travelled back to their safehouse. They had a pretty good idea of where the Snatchers were, tracing their movements through the many disappearances so that they could put the word out in their nightly broadcast of Potter Watch. 

One night Dean took what a book from the local library told him was a STEN submachine gun, several magazines, and apparated near to where they knew a Snatcher camp was. 

Filled with righteous fury, and a youthful sense of his own invincibility, he had simply walked up to the group of four Snatchers huddled around a campfire and lit them up, firing wildly and emptying the magazine. The beautiful thing about the STEN was that you didn’t need to be accurate, just control the recoil. It had been bloody in the extreme, and beyond horrifying at the time, but he couldn’t deny the hot feeling of triumph within his chest. Four less Snatchers to kidnap or murder people just like him. 

The crack of apparition split the air of Knockturn Alley, yanking him from his reverie and forcing him to concentrate on the view through the scope of his rifle. Augustus Rookwood had made the mistake of becoming predictable in his movements, and it was a mistake that they would capitalise on today. Rookwood exited the little alley just as he was expected to, and began his slow dignified walk up Knockturn towards Dean’s sniper nest. It seemed that Augustus Rookwood, secure in his pureblood superiority, and the illusion of safety his family name and position at the Ministry gave him, hadn’t bothered with an obviously spelled robe today, and was even wearing his robe open, letting the elaborately tailored clothing underneath show. Dean had to repress a snort at the prideful stupidity of purebloods everywhere, but it at least made sighting on the man’s heart even easier. 

Dean Thomas had chosen his position well, since the buildings on either side of Knockturn Alley, built up over the centuries, cut the risk of a crosswind foiling his aim to nothing. He exhaled softly, and squeezed gently on the trigger. The booming report didn’t shake him, nor did the kick of the rifle, and through the scope he watched with satisfaction as Augustus Rookwood crumpled bonelessly to the ground.


	7. The Writing Upon The Wall

**Brunton Airfield, England, 1975**

Harry Potter, Daphne Greengrass, and Susan Bones were seated at the long table in the dining room of the Dormitory Tent. When choosing the tents, they had gone with the deluxe model, since the size and layout meant that were afforded a private room each, but the very fact that it was the deluxe model made things like eating breakfast an interesting activity. It turned out that for wizards, the best in wizarding tents that money could buy got you something like what Harry imagined a Swiss ski lodge looked like, but undoubtedly more opulent. The dining table was made from solid ancient oak, polished to a deep black shine over the centuries. It was long enough to seat twenty, with matching chairs of the wood and age with intricately carved backs. The chandelier that hung above their heads to provide illumination was overly large, and overly ornate. 

Harry figured that all of this was all right for Daphne and Susan, who would be more comfortable with this kind of thing, both having had been raised in well-to-do homes, but this kind of overt wealth was a million miles from the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursley’s house. He still wasn’t used to it, and Harry had had his entire adult life to get used to being comfortably well off thanks to the wills of his parents and Sirius. It was just the three of them having breakfast, since everyone else had been up and about far earlier, as they had their own business to be about. Daphne and Susan were quietly chatting about something or other while Harry was lost to his thoughts, but they were all interrupted when Terry and Dean entered the room. 

‘Tell them what you did,’ growled Terry, as he pushed Dean into the chair opposite Harry, clearly annoyed. 

‘I’ll bite,’ said Daphne, shooting the pair of them an amused glance. Harry could see what had her so amused; the idea that Terry could push Dean anywhere, when Dean was six inches taller and outweighed him by a not inconsiderable amount _was_ kind of funny. It was like watching a jack russell intimidate a great dane. 

‘Mimblewimble,’ mumbled Dean. His face was red, visible even under his complexion, and he stared at the table as he picked at it with the edge of his thumbnail. 

‘I’ll tell you what he did,’ said Terry, shooting the assassin an annoyed glance, ‘he buggered up a perfectly executed execution by painting a logo – you know, from that stupid game he was obsessed with back home – on the wall above Rookwood’s body!’ 

Back home was how they all talked about their previous time. Harry felt that if the past was supposed to be a foreign country, then for time travellers the same could be said of the future. Even so it was a tidy way of referring to where they had come from without mentioning the time travelling part. 

‘Perfectly executed execution?’ 

‘Not the Grey Wardens?’ Susan asked, as she burst into laughter. She was the only one of them that would entertain Dean’s obsession with the Dragon Age games, and only then because she was fond of them too. ‘Oh Dean! Which logo did you use? And the motto? Oh this is too perfect.’ 

‘The one with the, uh, chalice, and the motto underneath,’ he replied, still not looking up. 

‘I’m confused,’ said Harry confusedly. ‘Grey Wardens?’ 

‘I thought it was, you know, fitting.’ 

‘Nerd!’ crowed Daphne, her eyes wide with delight. 

‘The Grey Wardens, Harry,’ replied Susan, taking pity on him, ‘are a fictional paramilitary force set up to combat a fictional all-encompassing force of darkness, called the Blight, in the Dragon Age games. The Blight swallows everything in its path; people, plants, whatever. Everything it touches is tainted with its darkness.’ 

‘Kind of like ole Riddle.’ 

‘Right,’ she said, shooting Dean a quelling look for interrupting. ‘The Grey Wardens sacrifice themselves to end the Blight. They take on a measure of the darkness to empower themselves so that they might fight it. They leave everything behind, be it family or friends, or the country of their birth, to fight it. They are supposed to be above politics, and will use any means necessary to combat the Blight, because to falter in their duty is to invite disaster.’ 

‘Nice.’ 

‘Dean’s right, it is a bit fitting. The Grey Wardens are the only ones capable of fighting the Blight head on. Everything about them was bound up in duty and sacrifice, not unlike we are now. Draw Harry a picture of the badge, Dean. The motto is ‘In Peace, Vigilance. In War, Victory. In Death, Sacrifice.’ 

Dean duly conjured a piece of paper and a pencil and began to sketch, rough lines thrown together to start with, but with each stroke of the pencil across the paper more of the image came into being, showing two griffins opposite each other, their wings thrown back regally, clutching a cracked chalice between their claws. Harry certainly thought it looked impressive. Adopting the heraldry and colours of a fictional group, especially one that wouldn’t enter muggle popular culture for at least another thirty years, would go a long way to solving their problem of how to disguise their involvement, as well as themselves. 

In a way it reminded Harry of Dumbledore. The headmaster had had his own group, hidden behind the aegis of the Order of the Phoenix, and while they hadn’t been as effective in stymying Voldemort as the New Firm hoped to be due to a difference in methods, they had forced the dark lord to divert attention and resources to combating them that he would have used to destabilise the Ministry faster. Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix had been effective far beyond the number of wands they could muster, and if they pulled this off right these Grey Wardens would be worth the same. Voldemort would have his Death Eaters searching high and low for an organisation that didn’t exist, but that would only convince him that they were just very well hidden. Since they knew who and what his targets had been in the original timeline they would be able to interfere enough to pull the heat off of the Ministry, whilst doing their best to avoid open battle, so that they could move toward their final objective: find the Dark Lord’s horcruxes and deal with Voldemort once and for all. 

Their arrival in the past would also work to their benefit. Harry had no doubt that the New Firm was better trained for magical combat and at a keener edge than anybody else in this time – not the Aurors or Hitwizards, nor Dumbledore’s Order, or the Death Eaters. They were a small force, but their anonymity, superior equipment, and their tactical advantages from the future would see them through most situations. They would have to operate cautiously, intelligently, because each of Harry’s friends was irreplaceable. There were no new recruits coming to them, no help from Her Majesty’s Government, which had always been an option back home. Nonetheless this was a solution that could work. 

‘Hold on,’ he said, ‘this could work for us. Once we start moving our plans forward we know that the Ministry, the Order, and the Death Eaters are going to be looking us. Not to mention when word about Rookwood gets out. Why not lay down a false trail?’ 

‘That’s… that’s actually a great idea.’ 

‘See!’ 

‘Do they have some kind of uniform?’ asked Harry. ‘We could put a hood on it, get Padma to apply the obfuscation ward from the Unspeakable robes.’ 

‘Weeeell,’ said Dean, drawing the word out as he thought about it. ‘The magic users do wear armour with a hood. We could just make, you know, bigger.’ 

‘Magic users.’ 

‘Padma knows some of the seamstress charms,’ supplied Susan, speaking over Daphne, who looked like she was enjoying herself thoroughly at Dean’s expense. ‘She’ll be able to do the whole job, warding and shielding and all, if you show her a drawing of what it looks like, Dean.’ 

‘That’s settled then,’ Harry said with finality, ‘Get a set of drawings of the uniform ready for Padma, and we’ll fill her in at lunch. I’ll leave it up to you to decide where we make our first appearance in disguise, Terry.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gone back to do some editing, just to fix a few typos and add chapter titles (5-JAN-15)


	8. Putting A fine Point To It

**“Grey Wardens” Headquarters, Brunton Airfield, England, 1975**

Padma Patil gave a whispered prayer of thanks that she had, in a rare moment of weakness in their third year at Hogwarts, allowed her sister Parvarti to teach her all of the full suite of seamstresses’ charms. She didn’t have anywhere near the same level of interest in fashion and clothes as her twin, but the ravenclaw hadn’t been able to resist the opportunity to learn something new. In retrospect a wise decision, since there had apparently been some decisions made in her absence that required her long-unused expertise. She didn’t mind not being present for the discussion – Padma had been busy in what Dean had dubbed her Batcave, enchanting more crystals to bolster their currently meagre supply. She had commandeered a clean bench in the Armoury Tent for the new task, and luckily all the equipment to make a start was her wand. She shuddered to think how fiddly the whole thing would be if she had to do it the muggle way. All those needles! 

As far as she was concerned idea of laying a false trail for the New Firm by pretending to be a fictitious organisation called the Grey Wardens couldn’t have come at a better time. It was a tediously long process, inscribing the array of runes necessary for the ward small enough to fit on each crystal, so she relished the opportunity to move onto something new. Like a lot of the equipment and technology they used, ward crystals were an innovation that had come about after the Fall. Right now, in 1975, if you wanted to lay down a ward to obstruct magical travel you had to lay out a series of ward stones in a grid over the desired area, and at least one wizard was tied down maintaining the effects. It was cumbersome and suited only to ambushes or assaulting prepared positions. 

In contrast the ward crystals, which were purple lumps of crystal about the size of two fists, were inscribed with the runic arrays and charged for extended use beforehand. Once deployed the ward expanded over an area in a bubble, and the effects could be extended over a larger area by deploying more crystals. It meant they didn’t require a witch or wizard to keep the ward going, and the whole team could engage in combat. It left their small team that bit more effective, and was just one of the advantages their advanced equipment gave them over their foes. That didn’t stop it from being tediously boring work, though, no matter how necessary it was. 

Dean had passed her his sketches, and while it was sourced from that ridiculous game he loved so much, she had to admit that it held promise. It also helped that Dean was quite the artist; his sketches gave her a lot to work with. 

It looked like a sleeved tabard of quilted fabric that was belted at the waist, over the Ukranian Ironbelly leather armour that was standard issue for them. The tabard itself was split into three sections; the shoulders and sleeves a plain royal blue with metal studs making a diamond pattern; the torso, which had scaled armour divided by fabric strips to make a striped pattern; and a leather hood. She could definitely do something with all that metal, and the hood could be made from the same material that they used for their armour. It would be long and at times tedious work to make up several sets of this new uniform, but a lot of her work was time consuming and tedious. She found it comforting, absorbing herself in a repetitive task. It helped her focus her mind away from thoughts better left alone. Today it was a way to avoid thinking about Parvarti. 

The scale armour, when charged with an enchantment like those found on the infamous Triple–W Shield Hats, would offer a basic protection against most jinxes and hexes. All those studs on the chest, shoulders, and sleeves, though… she was planning on inscribing on each a runic schema that together would produce an effect similar to that of the hood on her old Unspeakable robe. It would be time consuming in the extreme, but all powered up and working at once they would surround the wearer with a swirling mass of shadows and darkness. Together with the hood, which would hold the same enchantment, it would produce an effect much more intimidating than a plain black robe and bone-white mask. 

One shouldn’t forget the benefits of psychological warfare. 

The best thing about this new uniform, she decided, was the chance to experiment with warding. Much of what she did with the art was on a grand scale, so it was an exciting opportunity to practice her craft on more delicate work. After joining the Department of Mysteries as an Unspeakable, Padma had been assigned to the Wards section, which had been tasked with refining existing ward schema, and adapting or designing new ones. Later, after the Ministry fell, and Harry had recruited her to MI7 she had joined the Research and Development team, working directly under Hermione. Whilst there she had headed the Improved Fidelius project, which she was sure would serve to protect the magical world into the next century. At least now they had a chance to put it into place before things all went to hell.

Padma thought it best to adapt their existing field kit – armour, utility belt et al – around the new armour design, which Dean was insisting on calling it the “Regalia of Weisshaupt”, something that made her snort in amusement whenever she remembered it. The Ironbelly armour would go under the sleeved tabard she was sewing now, belted at the waist by the existing utility belt, which held the wearer’s muggle weapons, field potions kit, and all the rest of the useful things they stuffed into the magically expanded pouches attached to it. They would keep wearing the boots, obviously, and the helmet would be incorporated into the leather hood. The obfuscating spells she would weave into the hood would also do a good job of hiding the visor they all wore, which helped them spot active magic and protected the eyes. All in all it would serve Harry’s idea of laying a trail of false clues – in this case a shadowy organisation that seemed much bigger than the eight of them – for others to chase, all while keeping the utility of their more modern kit. 

When she had finished the first set, smoothing out the wrinkles against the bench in front of her, she could see just how good it looked. Dean’s drawings had looked impressive enough, but seeing it on the bench before her was something else. Everything about it suggested an organisation on a grand scale – why else would you need a uniform – but with the hoods, and the quasi-military cut to the uniform and the impact that the enchantments would lend the entire package Padma also knew that it would be intimidating to their enemies. 

She nodded, satisfied, and back to the long task of completing the rest. It was good to keep busy.


	9. The Trials And Tribulations Of Ciaran Aherne

**The Leaky Cauldron, London, 1975**

The thing that surprised Terry Boot the most, as he made his way up Charing Cross Road towards the Leaky Cauldron, was how much the wizarding world had failed to change. Here they were, close to forty years in the past and many of the familiar landmarks in Wizarding Britain were much the same as they were back home. The Leaky Cauldron for example, despite being the gateway between muggle London and the wizarding district of Diagon Alley was still the decrepit Tudor pile that was familiar to him from his Hogwarts years. It was perhaps a little cleaner, if he was feeling charitable, but outwardly it was the same large half-timbered seventeenth century inn. 

He pushed his way into the taproom, past the imposing oak door, the wood black with age and the pitch used to protect from the weather. The door, heavy as it was with the weight of years, it was a familiar comfort to Terry. The Leaky Cauldron had not survived the Fall, replaced with a security checkpoint. He much preferred the comforting welcome of the Leaky Cauldron, and as he stepped inside he had to work hard to keep his happiness and excitement off of his face. 

Their little jaunt through time, and their arrival in the mid-seventies, had given them an opportunity to avert a series of events that led to a truly unpleasant future. But more than that, and what was causing his excitement, was that for Terry it was a chance to create an information-gathering network from scratch. The beginning of MI7 was half a decade into his pass, and the truly challenging parts of his job were long ago. He was, right now, entirely bereft of his established contacts and government funding, and that was the best part. Back home Terry Boot was in charge of the day-to-day running of the Magical Intelligence Agency’s network of spies and informants. Back home the reason for his visit to the Leaky Cauldron today would have been delegated to Susan, or Daphne, or one of his other subordinates, but their shortage of manpower meant he needed to do things himself. If he were honest with himself he would admit that he was enjoying himself a little too much. Daphne had gone so far as to liken him to a “pig in muck”, which he thought was unkind if accurate. Fieldwork made his blood sing. 

Like they all did now when they left Headquarters, he was wearing a disguise. Any other wizard in their position would use either the polyjuice potion, human transfiguration, or even a glamour charm to alter their appearance, but that wasn’t how they played it in the New Firm. They kept things mundane where they could, utilising muggle methods that were undetectable to magic. Today Terry had taken the time to use hair dye to change both the base colour of his hair, as well as to add grey to the hair around his temples to artificially age him. He had pads held in his cheeks and a moustache to alter the shape of his face, and contacts to change the colour of his eyes. The only thing that he couldn’t easily change was his height, but Terry had the advantage of being of a just-above-average height. He looked unrecognisable, not that anyone but his colleagues knew who Terry Boot was, but one could never be too careful. 

Terry put all that out of his head, though, as he approached the bar and ordered from Tom his best bottle of firewhiskey, before facing the back of the taproom. His purpose of his visit today was to meet with a wizard named Ciaran Aherne, courtesy of Susan’s well-proven ability to get nice young men to tell her anything she wanted to know. He had volunteered for the job partly so that they could mix up the faces, so to speak, that Aherne saw, and partly because he wanted to get back in the field so quickly. 

There were several ways to cultivate an intelligence asset, both aggressive and benign. You could appeal to their sense of duty or patriotism. You could also use bribery, blackmail, or extortion. Sometimes which way you chose came down to personal preference or time constraints. Right now, the New Firm had only a limited amount of time to get a rudimentary network in place so in most cases they had to go the quick and dirty route. Bribery it was. Susan had identified the potential asset, and Daphne had gotten him drunk and taken some incriminating photos. It was Terry’s turn, and his job to seal the deal. 

Ciaran Aherne worked at the Cleansweep workshop, outside Bristol, as one of the company’s in-house bookkeeping clerks. His real value as a potential asset came from three things: Aherne was a middling member of the Fraternal Order of Bookeepers, File Clerks, and Accountants; was a gossip of the worst order; and even better, had a predilection for expensive firewhiskey that his pay packet couldn’t cover. Developing Aherne the quick and dirty way meant searching for a weakness, and his alcoholism had provided the crack into which Daphne had inserted her wedge. 

Aherne was sat at small, dirty table in the back corner. He was a dumpy man of middling height, had short black hair sprinkled with grey, and had an alcoholic’s nose that not even mediwizardry could fix. Right now he was grey faced and shaking, his eyes desperate, and had a single tumbler of firewhiskey clutched in his hands like it was a lifeline. Daphne hadn’t been kind when developing the Irishman, but then that hadn’t been her task. She had been told to get him drunk, get him to do something incriminating and document it, and get out. The large part of Terry’s job would be up to him to smooth things over and get him in a co-operative mood. 

'Care for a drink? My father always said a man shouldn't drink alone,' he said, placing the glass and bottle on the wooden table with a satisfying clunk and taking a seat. A swift dip of his hand into the wand pocket of his robe saw a silent muffliato go up around them. It wouldn't do to be overheard. 

'I'm waiting for someone,' replied Aherne, carefully looking anywhere but at Terry. 

'I know. You didn't think there was just one of us, did you? This is too important for that, Mr. Aherne.' Terry took the other man’s glass from the his suddenly nerveless hands, and placing it next to his own glass, poured them both a decent measure of the Leaky Cauldron's best firewhiskey. 'Have a drink. I'm sure you need one.' 

Aherne was looking at him now, face shiny with a cold sweat. He really was in a bad way. His mouth opened and closed, but he said nothing. He reached for his glass and knocked it back with an audible gulp. 

'By now you've realised the position you're in, Mr. Aherne. You did something ill-advised, we caught it on film, and now you're beholden to us or your life is forfeit.' Terry flashed him a bright, reassuring smile. 'But take heart! We don't want anything too rigorous from you, and you will be well rewarded for your efforts. We aren't cruel people, Mr. Aherne.' 

Terry spoke calmly and softly, to calm the man, and kept repeating his name so as to build a rapport. He was to appear friendly where Daphne had, at the end, appeared cruel. That and the money they would pay him would buy his co-operation. The incriminating photographs, which could at any moment be sent to Aherne’s workplace and home was the stick, and the handsome remuneration was the carrot. 

'What– What do you want from me?' 

He leaned forward conspiratorially. 'Nothing too arduous, I assure you. All we want is for you to keep us informed of any large orders of broomsticks, and where they will be delivered to. You're well placed for that, with your position at Cleansweep, and your membership with your little brotherhood. In return you will receive, from locations and times to be arranged, the sum of fifty galleons a month. Doesn't that sound fair?' 

Aherne gaped like a fish. Fifty galleons was likely more than he saw from three months' work, and would get him out of the financial trouble he was in _and_ buy him all the high-priced booze he could guzzle. They wanted Ciaran Aherne beholden to them and this would see it done. 'Y-yes. It does!' he exclaimed, greed shining clearly in his eyes. 

'Good. Await my note on where to contact me. We know where to find you, of course.' He stood, leaving his glass and the bottle standing on the table. 'Enjoy the rest on me.' 

Terry walked away, heading towards the exit to muggle London. That was this part of the their newborn network seen to. Terry, Susan, and Dean would be adding others to it in the next few days, giving them similar informants in the apothecaries, seamstresses, and Saint Mungo's. All together it would see them receiving a wealth of information that could, once analysed, show them just where the Death Eater’s safehouses, meeting places and supply dumps were. And even more information would soon be falling into their hands, assuming Daphne’s mission tonight went according to plan 

They were one step closer to the defeat of Voldemort.


	10. The Puppetmistress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little darker.

**The Ministry of Magic, London, 1975**

Daphne Greengrass strode through the halls of the Ministry of Magic in a body that was not her own. It was even quite different from hers; where she was tall and slim, her nameless victim was short and fat. They shared the same black hair and blue eyes yet where hers were a piercing icy blue, his were watery, and his gaze weak. It made walking interesting, to say the least. 

The Imperius curse was a curious piece of magic. Declared Unforgivable by the Ministry of Magic, the Imperius smothered completely the will of the target, letting the caster make the victim do whatever they wanted. With the Imperius you could force someone to dance a funny jig, or stand on their hands – or you could force them to murder, maim, and torture. Only the most strong-willed could resist it, and it was almost impossible to detect someone suffering from its effects except under extremely close scrutiny, and even then that was only if the caster was being particularly heavy handed. It was a spell that moved at the speed of thought, unaffected by distance, and was limited only by the imagination of the caster. Daphne Greengrass had quite the imagination. 

Daphne had found that if she cast the curse, then settled in to wait somewhere safe, she could use a variation of one of the Occlumency trances to find the filaments of magic connecting her to her victim, and follow them into their mind, allowing her to control their body as if it were her own. It was a curious form of possession, surprisingly powerful, and not limited by the usual boundaries of that technique. A skilled witch, proficient in the mind arts and dark magic, like Daphne undoubtedly was, could force her victim to cast the Imperius on another. Theoretically she could build a web of mind-slaves if she so chose, each one linked to the next. The most she had managed so far was a chain of three. 

Her victim was some kind of clerk in the records office, and so weak willed that there hadn’t been even the slightest mental tussle before her magic settled over him, crushing all resistance. In her hands the dark magic of the Imperius became a scalpel against her enemies, and with today’s victim she hadn’t even bothered to learn his name. It wasn’t important. Just like she didn’t know his name, he would never know hers. He wouldn’t even remember this happening; her presence in his thoughts and memories would allow for that. He was the worst kind of pureblood, in her opinion. Physically short and overweight, he possessed an over-abundance of chins and arrogance in equal measure, matched only by the absence of any real talents. He had been content to coast through life on his pedigree until joining the Ministry, where he had become just another example of the cancer of corruption poisoning the place. She could have judged him, been his jury and executioner too, what with her access to the innermost reaches of his mind, but in the end all that mattered to her was his ability to access individuals who would in turn provide to her valuable information, and had almost no resistance to her will. Cleaning up the Ministry would come later, and her victim was small fry. 

She would get from him what she needed and move on. All while keeping her hands clean of evidence. 

It was her speciality. Using the darker sort of magic, along with the confundus and some seriously mind-bending concoctions of both magical and mundane origin to achieve her ends. These were skills that she had had to cultivate – along with a sociopathic sense for the amoral that she had honed to razor sharpness – to survive in Slytherin as a halfblood, and in the wider world once everything had gone to shit. To a Slytherin or a Death Eater, a halfblood was only just good enough for service, and for someone who looked like she did it wasn’t likely to take a pleasant form, nor one she was willing to provide. 

So at Hogwarts she had kept a cold mask placed over her features, and forgot how to laugh and smile. She used misdirection, the occasional catspaw, and a well-developed flair for violence and coercion to keep herself – and her family – safe. The word got around that Bad Things happened to those who threatened Daphne, but she always kept her hands clean. After Dumbledore’s death she had had to extend her methods to the world outside Hogwarts, especially once the Ministry fell and use of the Unforgivables became very forgivable indeed. She had folded the Imperius into her repertoire, honed her skill with it to a scalpel’s edge, and survived. So had her sister and mother, and that had been enough for Daphne. 

Even so, she would have ended up in Azkaban or worse if it hadn’t been for Harry Potter. He had, for reasons she still hadn’t pulled out of him, interceded on her behalf with some shadowy contact of his in the DMLE or Wizengamot. When she had asked, long ago before the Fall, all Harry had said was that he had some experience with desperate people using dark magic, and that doing bad things for good reasons shouldn’t condemn her. Everyone deserved a second chance. 

She had owed him, big time, and had carried the marker for years, and when he had approached her after the Fall, that had been enough to buy her loyalty in the short term. What had secured it in the long term though, had been the things that he had shown her, both through word and deed. To her Harry was the living embodiment of how someone like her, with the weight of their past misdeed weighing on their shoulders. Harry Potter had showed her what it meant to be just, good, and merciful. He had showed her that the world had not been as black and white as she had thought, nor divided so sharply into them and us. He had shown her that sometimes you needed to do bad things for good reasons. 

After the Fall he had brought her into his New Firm, as he liked to call it, and along with the others had built them into a family of sorts. For the first time in fifteen years Daphne allowed her mask to slip. She smiled, and joked. She even laughed. Her position at the Magical Intelligence Service provided protection to her family, and allowed her to use her talents for the betterment of magical society, rather than her selfish ends. Because of all of this she would have followed Harry Potter anywhere. Indeed, her loyalty to him had been enough for her to follow him forty years into the past, far out of the reach of her loved ones, and she knew without a doubt that it was the same for the others. They would follow him to whatever end. 

With any luck it would end with them all standing over Voldemort’s smoking corpse. 

Her meat-puppet had arrived at her destination, the Goblin Liaison Office on the fourth floor. It was telling that, of all the departments within the Ministry of Magic, it was the Goblin Liaison Office that the Wizengamot had allowed a muggleborn to ascend to the position of Department Head of. To most everyone it was an ill-regarded department, a bureaucratic backwater only just one step above the cleaning staff. Consorting with _goblins_? Not a fit occupation for a respectable pureblood, not at all. 

It was the information that passed through the Goblin Liaison Office that made it today’s target. Due to ancient treaty – likely the one that also handed a magical race with a deep hatred for wizards sole control of the monetary system within the British Isles – the goblins were required to furnish the Ministry of Magic with a certain amount of information on balance transfers, currency exchange, and the productivity of their mint. Normally it was information completely ignored by wizards. After all, as long as the gold stayed where they put it what did they care about anything else? 

For their current endeavour, namely intelligence gathering on the Death Eaters, the information held in the filing cabinets of the Goblin Liaison Office was critical. Harry had seemed pretty sure that Hermione could ferret out, within the copious rolls of parchment that Daphne’s spellwork would see delivered to a dead drop of her choosing, how the holders of vaults sympathetic to Voldemort were moving their money. Hopefully they could find the vault Voldemort was using to store his tribute and plan a raid. After all, from what she had heard, breaking into Gringott’s Bank was old hat for Harry and Hermione. 

A quick glance inside the small office showed her that her next victim was indeed inside, bent over as he examined a grouping of one of the floor-to-ceiling banks of pigeon-holes, which were stuffed to bursting with rolls of parchment. She slipped inside the small room and cast a silent colloportus on the door, ensuring that they wouldn’t be interrupted. 

‘Imperio,’ she said, her stolen body’s arm pointing the shaft of his stolen wand squarely at her next victim’s back. It was strange how her meat-puppet’s voice sounded discordant to her ears; you would think she’d be used to that by now. Her next victim’s back straightened as the curse took hold, and she shifted her grip on the wand as it twitched unconsciously with each mental command. Layering in the delicate commands necessary to see the information they needed was sent to them without anyone being the wiser would time and finesse. 

Once that information was on its way she would be gone. No trace would remain, not even the telltale signature of the obliviate, thanks to her rummaging and reordering of her victim’s memories deep at the source. Then her victims would return to what they were doing before her interruption, and Daphne would return to Headquarters, her hands clean. 

Just like always.


	11. Unfeeling The Future

**Headquarters, Brunton Airfield, England, 1975**

You carry on, that was what her mother used to say. It was something that had stuck with Lavender Brown even after time, and the eventual deaths of her parents, had put a certain distance between her and the child who remembered the phrase. It had been years since she had outwardly resembled her younger self; that teenager had been brimming with a passion for Divination, fashion, and makeup. Only one of her passions had survived the war with Voldemort. The war had been a crucible for many witches and wizards, leaving those who had felt the call to fight, either with Dumbledore’s Army, the Order of the Phoenix, or even the Ministry a different person altogether. Lavender knew that this feeling of dislocation from whom she had been growing up wasn’t unique to her – the others at the very least had to feel the same – but all the same she had been forged into something different by her experiences. Sharper. More focused. She hadn’t been even close to figuring out who she was as a person before the war, let alone the Fall, and finding herself afterwards had been difficult. At least that was something that they all shared. 

Spectral Analyst was her title now. It wasn’t what she had pictured for herself growing up, for those dreams had been centred more around becoming the Divination professor at Hogwarts, or opening a fashion boutique in Diagon Alley with Parvarti. Her brush with Lycanthropy had put paid to those ambitions. She could remember clearly the hot pain of Fenrir Greyback’s teeth piercing her skin, then the sensation of falling, then… nothing. She had woken up in St. Mungo’s weeks later. Since the old werewolf hadn’t been transformed at the time, it not having been the full moon, she hadn’t been infected by Lycanthropy. She had come out the other side of it with two things, scars that would never heal and a connection to the heavens that helped her focus her scrying and other divination-based spells. The mind healer had spoken to her about finding the silver lining in things, no pun intended. Once her healing was over and done with she had had to come to terms with the changes. 

You carry on, her mother used to say, and that’s what Lavender Brown had done; picked herself up, dusted herself off, and carried on. 

Her talent with Divination, which throughout Hogwarts had come in fits and starts, was now accurate to a degree that would have made Professor Trelawney salivate in envy. It was accurate enough that Harry had approached her when he was putting MI7 together. He had been very different to the boy she remembered from the Battle of Hogwarts, and their sixth year before that. He had had haunted eyes then, to go with his haunted past, and a stare that seemed preoccupied with things only he could see. The Fall was behind them both, he had said to her as they sat in a little muggle café, as he watched her with his haunted eyes, but the magical folk of the United Kingdom still needed a protector. He would have her help if she would give it, and she hadn’t been able to say no. And so it was that she had become the Spectral Analyst for the New Firm. 

Unlike the others in their little ragtag group of time travellers, Lavender hadn’t been assigned to a section, assigned a boss or given staff to help her. There was nobody else that could do what she could do, or see what she could see, especially around the full moon. That wasn’t a problem though – she could See far enough for all of them. 

The Magical Intelligence Service’s information gathering methods back home had been diverse, with only a small proportion of any intelligence they had gained coming from her. Since arriving in 1975, however, she had had to take up much more of the slack. Terry didn’t have a vast information gathering apparatus that spanned the United Kingdom here, though he was taking steps to build up a group of informants. She knew that he had managed the first crucial steps, developing a connection with part of the broom industry. Further steps would need to be taken, obviously, into the other industries and the bureaucracy of the Ministry. But until then the New Firm relied upon her perform magical reconnaissance on the sites of known Death Eater raids, as well as attempt to track the movements of known Death Eaters themselves. 

It was a tricky proposition, and not least because there was only one of her. It also came down to how accurate her scrying visions were. Sometimes they were simple; a face, and clues that would tell her when a target would be in a certain place. That was how it had been when she had cast her gaze towards Augustus Rookwood. Othertimes, however, it was difficult to See clearly. Sometimes images came to her all at once, and she had to take the time to untangle them in her memory. At other times she fell into a deeper trance, and the visions she received were steeped in confusing metaphor and imagery. 

At Hogwarts, professor Trelawney had taught them that the best way to See the past, present, or future, whether close by or far off, was to use a crystal ball. Crystomancy did allow a practitioner to See, much like you could use tasseomancy, palmistry, or the ubiquitous favourite cartomancy, to divine a person’s future. There were a hundred methods from which a practitioner could choose, using just about every medium you could imagine, but in the end it came down to personal preference. Her own favoured method of scrying was hydromancy. This was her task this morning; to see what could be seen, continuing her scrying down a list given to her by Terry and Harry. 

For Lavender to scry she needed three things. The first was rainwater that had been collected without magic, The second a shallow but wide bone china bowl, that had also not been touched directly with magic, into which went the rainwater would be poured. Third was a bundle of sage leaves, that must be picked by her own hand, which would be burnt to purify the air. She had completed the preparations earlier and all that she needed now was to slip into her meditative trance. 

She remembered the words that her teacher in meditation had taught her. He was a Buddhist monk that was a friend of Parvarti’s parents, and it had been that connection that had managed to gain her his tutelage. It was still easy, even after years, to slip into the memory of her first lesson. 

‘Sit and concentrate on your breathing,’ Rohini had said. ‘Focus on the passage of your breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils. Remember, when the sea is rough, sediment is churned up and the water becomes murky, but when the wind dies down the water becomes clear. Focus on your breath, and your mind will become calm.’ 

Lavender focused on the words, feeling much of the world around her slip away. The walls around her disappeared, as well as the flagstones underneath where she sat, until only she and the bowl remained. She had to be patient if she wanted to See. Patience meant control over her emotions; hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, and fear. She felt each of them in differing amounts, and in this state they were almost things she could see and touch. She had to control them to find harmony, and balance, for once she had achieved that she would be able to See. 

Her focus shifted, tugged almost imperceptibly, but she followed the pull with ease. She saw a house, large and imposing in size. It sat nestled in the valley between two hills, the landscape carefully tamed and guided by many generations of hands. The image blurred, and she saw the sun progress across the sky, almost too fast for her to track. A murder of crows was rousted by something unseen, scattering from a copse of trees into the sky. The image shifted again, and she saw eight torches surround the house. They dipped, setting the house aflame, and she could hear screams. Her focus shifted again, breaking, and she was back in her body before the bone china bowl, her throat burning from taking deep breaths of sage-smoke as she came back to herself. 

She was exhausted, slumped forward over the bowl. One thought remained in her head, once the confusion of the vision had begun to pass. Meadowhill would burn in four days. Harry needed to be told.


	12. The House At Meadowhill

**Planning Room, “Grey Wardens” Headquarters**

**Brunton Airport, England, 1975**

‘The Death Eater raid on Meadowhill,’ said Harry Potter, ‘was an important turning point in the story of the Dark Lord Voldemort’s rise to power.’ He was standing in front of the others, giving the briefing before their first big operation since arriving in their past. Harry was experienced with leading briefings, that having been one of his duties at the Magical Intelligence Service back home. 

‘It had several impacts, each in turn important. The raid marked the first strike on the part of the Death Eaters against the progressive, pro-muggleborn faction within the Wizengamot. It was the first strike by the Death Eaters against what we would call a hard target; before they had always struck the softer targets of muggle population centres, and isolated muggleborn. Meadowhill sat behind impressive wards, and not only did the Death Eaters succeed in penetrating said wards, but the raid resulted in the death of Tabitha Meadowes and her two daughters. It was the direct reason that Dorcas Meadowes terminated her employment as a Cursebreaker with Gringott’s Bank, and her subsequent joining of the Order of the Phoenix.’ 

Following Lavender’s panicked patronus message to Harry, they had called a meeting with everyone. It was in the dining room of the dormitory tent, which for that evening would be doubling as their briefing room. This was what they had been waiting for, and would be their first major test. They had drawn up a list of the major events of Voldemort’s first rise to power and Meadowhill had been at the top. Harry wasn’t so naive as to believe that the timeline that they had been working from when they had laid their plans would stay intact – that was why their nascent intelligence network and Lavender’s scrying was so important. They knew who and what Voldemort had targeted the first time, so they knew where to watch. How Harry and the others reacted would set the tone for the first part of their campaign. 

The large ornate table that had taken up much of the available space in the room had been shrunk and packed away, and the remaining chairs had been turned to face the back of the room. The back wall of the dining-cum-briefing-room was now dominated by a series of maps. The was an old Ordinance Survey map of West Yorkshire, and several more detailed ones that showed the lay of the land around the family estate. 

‘Dorcas Meadowes went on to be one of the key members of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix,’ continued Harry, ‘and is a strong duellist, as well as being an expert on warding, and caused enough problems for the Death Eaters that Voldemort killed her himself in ’81. She is a prime example of the talent of magical Britain that was wasted in this war. 

‘This presents us with a golden opportunity. Our intelligence, both from the future and what we know from our sources in the present, shows that this is the first real attempt by Riddle to remove a political opponent from within a heavily warded position. Before this attacks by the Death Eaters were focussed on soft targets, isolated muggleborns and muggles. This was his first real success, and I aim for it to be his first defeat.’ 

He turned to the maps pinned to the wall behind him, and pointed towards the Ordinance Survey map of West Yorkshire. He had marked the location of the Meadowes family home with a muggle pin coloured a cheerful blue. On another map, this one hand drawn by Dean using descriptions provided by Lavender, as well as some very careful reconnaissance, the estimated radius of the house wards was marked with pencil. ‘If you pay close attention to the contour lines on the topographic map of the target area, the terrain around the estate, as well as the estimated of the wards, you see that the house at Meadowhill suits an aggressive defence. The house is nestled within a box valley, and that valley will be the key to our ambush. 

‘We’ll extend the anti-travel wards ourselves, here and here,’ he said, pointing at the hills that extended out on either side of the estate, ‘to funnel their approach towards our ambush. Lavender puts their approach as coming from the road, so we’ll keep things simple; a standard ambush scenario. All hands on deck with this one, guys. Team one will be Hermione, Padma, Lavender, and myself. We’ll create a base of fire and suppress the Death Eaters as they approach Meadowhill’s ward line. Team Two will be Susan and Terry. I want you two to create a crossfire while Team Three – that’s Dean and Daphne – sets up on the northeast ridge as overwatch. Go time is 2100, so get some food, take a nap, or do a final check on your equipment. Remember, tonight is also the first practical test of our new guise as Dean’s Grey Wardens, so familiarise with that too. Let’s be about it.’ 

Harry turned away to look over the maps one more time, and the meeting broke up, the others leaving the room in a whirl of chatter. They split into twos and threes to follow his advice, to start sorting through their equipment or to get a snack. 

Their plan was a simple one, but the best ones always were. The old adage went that no plan survived contact with the enemy, and that was why Harry had long ago learnt to delegate and trust his team. His team was experienced with this kind of combat, and though it wasn’t something they had to do a lot they practiced with reasonable frequency. He could trust the others not to fuck it up. Harry had placed himself with Team One because he was best at throwing explosive magic, and since it was their job to get the approaching Death Eaters to hunker down he would mainly be throwing blasting curses, while Lavender and Padma used cutters, and Hermione shielded. Susan and Terry, attacking from on the flank, would also use blasting curses, aiming to cause as much area-of-effect damage as possible. Dean, from his overwatch position would use his rifle to snipe any Death Eaters in a leadership position, and since they would be outside the anti-travel wards they could shift position quickly to cut off any retreat. 

Lavender’s scrying suggested that their enemy would equal their numbers, which was normally something to be avoided when you were as strapped for wands as the New Firm was, but Harry trusted in the their superior training, intelligence, equipment, and tactics to see them through. It was vitally important that they not take their future knowledge for granted. Harry had to assume that anything they knew about what Riddle’s next moves might be was suspect until confirmed. That wasn’t to say that they were taking any chances, however. All the major locations raided in the First Wizarding War had been placed under surveillance. In addition to Lavender’s talents they had resorted to methods that were inspired by the muggle world. They used a crystal, called pingers for short, that were inscribed with a runic array that worked much like a protean charm. When tripped they caused a matched crystal back at headquarters to emit light. They were placed carefully, so that the people actually living there wouldn’t trip them but so that anyone sniffing around would. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lavender’s skill with Divination; on the contrary Lavender had proved herself again and again. No, it was more the paranoia of the seasoned intelligence agent coming into play. Redundancy was important because people were only human, and humans missed things. But it was equally important for him to not see their equipment as omnipotent and omnipresent. 

He turned away from the map-covered wall, pushing his thoughts into their carefully labelled compartments. Right now he needed to focus on the mission at hand, and right now that meant grabbing some food and doing a final check of his equipment. He trusted his people and had faith in their plan. 

The Death Eaters wouldn’t know what hit them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've come up a little short with this story - having trouble with the next chapter. No idea when I'll update this next, sorry. Also sorry for the length.


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